


Enigma

by confundedgryffindor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Break Up, Fighting, M/M, Self-Destruction, Unhealthy Relationships, VERY VERY non-explicit smut, no beta we die like men, wolfstar has a very very unhealthy relationship im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 07:02:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21490291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confundedgryffindor/pseuds/confundedgryffindor
Summary: But even the brightest of stars burn out, and the ice melts come spring.-A series of vignettes of a relationship crashing and burning.
Relationships: Benjy Fenwick/Remus Lupin, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	Enigma

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write some unhealthy and highkey toxic wolfstar lolzor whatvha gon' do 'bout it? 
> 
> please, don't romanticise this, it is very very toxic my dudes. 
> 
> ANYWAY, no beta for this one (barely any editing either haha if this is a mess then i wholeheartedly apologise). it's also a continuation of [this](https://confunded-gryffindor.tumblr.com/post/187869816100/i-hope-sirius-says-through-the-crackling) funky drabble here, which went from 300 words to 3.3k. how? idk mate but it did indeed happen
> 
> anyway (again) enjoy the unedited angstfest

Remus is so in love that it hurts. 

His heartbeat speeds up in his chest, slams against his ribcage so hard he thinks it might burst open. His smile isn't that tentative, faint quirk of his lips, but wide, hurting his cheeks and threatening his face to split in half.

Every time he looks at Sirius, he can only think about that. He's so in love that it hurts, in the best way it could ever hurt. There's nothing else to think about, no sorrow or anger or confusion. It's solid; like a warm orb of light in his stomach, like ice on a frozen river in December.

But even the brightest of stars burn out, and the ice melts come spring.

* * *

"It's a whisky on the rocks kind of night, huh?"

Remus snorts into his whisky tumbler, not turning to the side to see who just spoke. "Who says it's not always one of those nights?"

It is, in fact, one of those specific nights where he definitely needs a whisky or four before he stumbles home and passes out on his sofa in jeans while obsessively trying to forget the day he's had. He's been practically stuck in the office all day, only getting a lunch break which he spent with Larry, his co-worker who constantly clears his throat with vile, mucus-y sounds. It's not the life he wants for himself, but he can't just quit, get up and leave and never look back at financial papers and Snotty Larry. So he sits at the bar instead, desperately trying to forget.

"Oh, true. Say, who is this wise man, drinking whisky on the rocks whenever he wants?"

Remus finally turns, and beside him sits a man. A man who causes Remus' heart to leap to his throat, that stops his breath and forces him to tighten his grip on his tumbler so he won't drop it. The man looks… well, he looks like an angel, Remus thinks. His face is sharp; jawline, cheekbones, pointy nose, all of him is sharp. His black hair is tied back on the top of his head in a messy bun, and at first Remus wants to groan because  _ shit, I'm suddenly attracted to a man-bun guy,  _ but he looks  _ so good  _ that Remus doesn't care. He's dressed in a white shirt and a leather jacket, and when Remus meets his eyes, he realises that they're  _ grey.  _ Bright, glinting grey, swirling like liquid mercury.

Remus swallows, tearing his gaze from the man. "Remus," he says.

"Well, hello there Remus," the man says. He's grinning, showing off perfectly straight, nicotine stained teeth. He leans in close, close enough that Remus can feel his breath on his face, and runs his tongue over his teeth. "What do I have to say to get you in my bed, preferably tonight?"

Remus laughs before knocking back the last dredges off watered down whisky.  _ That,  _ he thinks, but shakes his head. "What about your name, for starters?"

"Sirius," the man replies, still so so close, still grinning that perfectly imperfect grin.  _ Sirius.  _ It fits him, Remus thinks with a smile, with the way his entire  _ being  _ just seems to burn and crackle with electric intensity Remus has never felt before.

"Right, Sirius," Remus says, "how about I buy us a drink—another, in my case—and we just see where the night takes us?"

"That sounds perfect."

The night, it seems, takes them to the men's room, locked behind an unsecure stall door with Sirius' hand down Remus' pants, Remus' hand in the other man's hair and his lips against his paper skin neck, bruising it with blossoms of deep purple. Remus whispers his name like a prayer— _ Sirius, Sirius _ —and it tastes as electric and burnt and as intense as it sounded only half an hour earlier, coming from his lips at the bar. It's fire, burning like the stars above a country side road, crackling like the broken speakers of an old phone and Remus can't get enough.

Sirius leaves him with a sticky pants and a sloppy, burning kiss against his lips, with a phone number and a promise to repeat this.

* * *

They move fast, but the world always seems to stop spinning on its axis when Sirius is with him.

Their drunken one off turns into dinner the next week, and Remus sits across from Sirius with a glass of wine, legs tangled together underneath the table as they feed each other bits of their fancy food which Remus can't actually afford.

"What do you look for in a relationship, then, Remus?" Sirius asks. His foot runs up and down Remus' calf, like a steady presence to show that he's actually  _ there,  _ and Remus isn't dreaming of fire intensity and liquid mercury eyes.

Remus hums around a mouthful of wine and sets his glass down on the table, swallows and says, "Adventure."

"Adventure, huh?" Sirius grins. He mimics Remus; draining his own glass of wine before setting it down on the table, then he leans forward. "Why don't you wait outside then, while I pay?"

"I should pay for my own meal."

"No, no." Sirius is grinning, still, perfectly imperfect, bright like the stars. "Let me."

"Alright," Remus breathes, and stands.

He waits outside of the restaurant, and waits and waits, and Sirius never exits after him. Remus closes his eyes and sees swirling liquid mercury, feels fire breath ghosting on his lips, and opens his eyes and sees—

Sirius, on a motorcycle, without a helmet. The revving engine echoes in the street, and Remus finds himself grinning.

"What do you say, Remus?" Sirius yells over the engine. "You feeling up for an adventure?"

They move fast, without helmets, zooming down the cramped streets in London, passing cars and red buses and drunken hoards of people. The wind booms in Remus' ears, drowning out all other noise, and he tightens his grip on Sirius' squeaky leather jacket and  _ whoops,  _ loudly, yet still barely audible over the roaring of the motorcycle. They move fast, and Remus finds himself scooting closer to Sirius, gripping his jacket tighter, holding onto him like he's the only thing keeping Remus standing on earth. His heart is thundering in his chest, the adrenaline courses through his veins and he can't get enough.

* * *

Remus is so in love that it hurts. 

His heartbeat speeds up in his chest, slams against his ribcage so hard he thinks it might burst open. His smile isn't that tentative, faint quirk of his lips, but wide, hurting his cheeks and threatening his face to split in half.

Every time he looks at Sirius, he can only think about that. He's so in love that it hurts, in the best way it could ever hurt. There's nothing else to think about, no sorrow or anger or confusion. It's solid; like a warm orb of light in his stomach, like ice on a frozen river in December.

Remus runs his hand through Sirius' hair, detangling the knots at the back of his head, smiling to himself. It's almost unbearable, how much he loves this man, and his swirling eyes and knotted hair.

Sirius cracks an eye open, smiles and buries his face into the pillow. "Creep," he mumbles.

Remus laughs. "What was that?"

"Creep," Sirius repeats, grabbing Remus hand. He brings it to his chest, hugging it close. "Watching me while I sleep."

"Would you rather that I leave? I start working in an hour, you know."

"No." Sirius tugs at Remus' hand, trying to bring him down to lay down next to him. "Stay."

Remus laughs and collapses back down on the bed, his hand still trapped in Sirius grip. He leans forward a little, presses his lips against Sirius' forehead and mumbles, "Twenty minutes, then I've got to leave."

"'Course, love."

"Hmm," Remus says, wrapping his free arm around Sirius. "I love you."

"I love you too."

* * *

They have a picnic on a rooftop in the east of London. Sit beneath a polluted night sky and talk about nothing and everything as they drink champagne out of plastic mugs from IKEA, dip strawberries straight into a jar of Nutella and leave the green leaves on the roof beside their blanket.

"My life was so boring without, you know," Remus says absentmindedly. He swirls his plastic mug in his hand and watches the bubbles from the champagne rise to the top and fizz against the sides.

"Yeah?" Sirius grins, dips his finger into the jar of Nutella and then sucks it off with an  _ obscene  _ sound that causes Remus' neck to flush pink.

"Yeah," he breathes. "You're this…  _ enigma  _ of happiness in my life. You make everything interesting, like… I see the world through different eyes."

Sirius scoffs. "You're drunk."

"I'm not! I'm just… very in love. With you. And your explosive nature."

Sirius blushes. He leans forward and presses his lips against Remus' cheek, pulls away with a wet  _ smack _ and grins. "Good job I'm in love with you too, then."

* * *

They fight. 

Remus doesn't even know what they fight about but they do. Yell and curse and slam doors, Sirius leaves, sometimes. Sometimes he pushes Remus against the kitchen counter, kisses him with fire intensity and tugs at his hair as their teeth clash together as a way to say  _ Shut the fuck up  _ or  _ I'm sorry.  _ Remus can't figure out which.

Sometimes, Sirius leaves for days, weeks at a time, comes back with a guilty and beaten look and clings to Remus, pets his hair and peppers his face with small kisses all while mumbling  _ I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Re,  _ and then they never talk about it again.

They laugh.

They laugh about everything, at everyone, because life is too short to not laugh. They laugh into each other's mouths as they pull and tug at hair and clothes. They laugh at the telly, at each other, at people dressed in overly excessive clothes on a Wednesday morning when they're on the underground.

They move fast and never stop and Remus is exhausted to his bones but it feels like a  _ good  _ exhausted; like it's what's keeping him breathing, standing grounded on earth.

* * *

They're drawn to each other like magnets—except they're the same ends of different ones, desperately trying to twist and turn to fit together while clashing and never fitting the way they're supposed to. It's intense, it's exhausting and Remus should stop. He should go back to his office job and complain about people who microwave fish while he himself is on his fourth cup of milky coffee, he should write reports and fill out forms and stop trying to fit with someone who only causes him to clash and crash and burn, but the intensity Sirius holds is impossible to let go of.

It's always cracking, always burning with embers of empty promises and chaos and  _ love  _ that Remus hasn't experienced before, and even though it's exhausting and painful, it's _ absolutely everything _ and Remus finds himself trying to twist and turn to fit together like they did that first night at the bar.

They fight and they  _ fuck _ and Remus knows he should be unhappy but he's not. Not when they're yelling about nothing, not when his thighs are flushed with Sirius, moving slow and deep with his lips against pasty white skin, not when Sirius leaves for a week only to come back with a new pair of shoes and distant eyes and a new cologne for Remus to say  _ I'm sorry.  _ He should hate it, he should let it go but he can't when Sirius is burning so bright, like the star he's named after.

* * *

Sirius' touch burns Remus' skin, but he can't ask him to not come any closer because he  _ wants _ the burn. He wants fire, sizzling skin and a racing heart and it's self destructive, he knows, but he can't stop.

He doesn't want to stop. He wants to feel  _ alive  _ and Sirius makes him feel alive in the best possible way even though it  _ hurts. _ It hurts to be left alone, to wait for Sirius to come back and apologise. It hurts when he touches Remus, when he says  _ I love you  _ and Remus says it back with a burn in his throat.

It's self destructive, a fire that won't burn out by itself, a fire that needs an extinguisher. It's intense, it's hot puffs of breaths and glinting eyes and broad smiles and it  _ hurts  _ and Remus never wants it to stop.

* * *

"You're fucking exhausting!" Remus exclaims in the car one day. He turns the radio down, and twists in his seat to glare at Sirius. "Do you know that? I can't fucking keep up with you and your spur of the moment ideas that never ends well!"

"It's never bothered you before," Sirius says. His eyes are trained on the road in front of them, slippery and shiny with relentless rain which won't stop falling,  _ pelting _ down on the streets. His jaw is clenched and tight, hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white. 

"Maybe it has," Remus says. " _ Maybe _ , I just haven't been able to tell you before, because every single time I ask you to grow the  _ fuck  _ up, you leave."

"Remus." Sirius' voice is sharp and clipped, with a weirdly aristocratic lilt Remus has heard before but never asked about. He realises he doesn't know much about Sirius and his past; only knows the whirlwind of  _ let's do this  _ and  _ let's do that. _

"What? It's what you do! You act like an arse, leave and come back like everything gets fixed within a week and then never talk about it. It's exhausting.  _ You're  _ exhausting."

Sirius pulls up on a petrol station, unlocks the door on Remus' side and of the car and says, "Get the fuck out."

Remus laughs humorlessly, staring at his partner in disbelief. "What?"

"You fucking heard me: Get out."

So Remus does. He steps out on the car, slams the door shut the hardest he can, and as soon as the door is shut, Sirius drives off, leaving Remus alone on a petrol station somewhere in the outskirts of London, already sopping wet with the rain that won't stop. He yells, loudly, frustrated and exhausted and hurt. And then he cries. Sinks down on the wet ground, sobbing angry tears, exhausted tears, broken and hurt and sad tears.

* * *

Remus walks into the office with tired eyes and a broken heart and exhausted limbs and asks for a transfer to the office in Wales. He doesn't tell his boss why, and instead makes up a bullshitty excuse about his mum being ill when she's not, tells his boss he wants to be close to her in case something happens when it won't.

He moves a month later.

* * *

Remus hates dating apps, and yet he finds himself in a mediocre restaurant at 7 PM on a Saturday, opposite of a rather attractive man named Benjy. 

They're drinking wine, their meals almost finished, and Remus can only think of his first date with Sirius, four year prior.

"What do you look for in a relationship, Remus?" Benjy asks, smiling a ridiculously pretty smile.

Remus closes his eyes, counts to ten and tries not to think about swirling mercury eyes and burning breaths and inky black hair. Tries to forget the wine he drank with Sirius, tries to breathe through the ache in his chest and tries to convince himself that he should be over it all because it's been four years and he hasn't heard from Sirius once since he left him on a petrol station in London, shivering in the rain.

"Stability," Remus replies eventually, and a word has never hurt more.

* * *

Benjy is stable. He doesn't fight, doesn't leave and come back with new shoes and a new cologne for Remus, he doesn't say useless, empty words. He's not exhausting.

He moves slowly, hugging Remus from behind as they cook dinner together in Remus' flat. Smiles with a glint in his eyes, his  _ brown  _ eyes, that doesn't say fire or intensity or even  _ love.  _ Benjy moves like a turtle on its way to the sea, slowly, carefully, yet determined. He doesn't move with the speed of motorcycles and getting off in bathrooms and cars on the highway.

He's not Sirius.

"Can you honestly say that you're happy with me?" Benjy asks, one day when Remus hasn't been feeling anything other than dullness and aches in his chest because he misses something he shouldn't.  _ Someone  _ he shouldn't.

"What?" Remus says, not tearing his eyes from the window in his kitchen, where the sun is shining through white clouds outside, where life moves fast and slow and people laugh and cry. 

"You seem unhappy."

"'m not."

"You are, though."

Remus finally looks at Benjy. He looks worried, eyebrows knitted together in a frown, brown eyes ridden with concern. Remus breathes; inhales three times, exhales twice and says, "I'm not unhappy with you. It's not… it's not you who's done something, or make me unhappy."

"Why aren't you happy, then? What can I do to help?"

Remus sighs and looks back out the window. "There's nothing to do, Benjy. I just miss someone, and I will never get them back."

"Maybe I should leave," Benjy says. 

He pushes his chair away from the small kitchen table, ready to stand up and Remus looks at him, says a very hurried, "Don't!" ready to crumple down in front of him, break and crash and burn, without fire intensity and glinting, swirling mercury.

"Please, don't leave Benjy. I… I know I'm not very good company right now, but I… I need you here, please."

Benjy swallows, pushes his chair forward again and grabs Remus' hand. "The other person… Did they leave you?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Remus shakes his head. "Doesn't matter."

"Okay." Benjy rubs his thumb over Remus' knuckles. "I won't, then. Leave, that is."

* * *

“I hope,” Sirius says through the crackling speaker, barely audible over the violent rain. He swallows hard, and Remus is surprised he can hear it. “I hope you’re good, Remus.”

“Yeah.” Remus tugs at his sopping wet hair. He can feel water clinging to his eyelashes and he doesn’t know whether it’s tears or rain or both and his heart is breaking, even though it’s been five  _ fucking  _ years and it shouldn’t hurt anymore. He can’t even describe the feeling in coherent words, only  _ stabby  _ and  _ painful  _ and  _ cracking. _ It’s… heavy. Like breathing through a pillow.

“I… I want you to be happy,” Sirius says, then, just when Remus’ heart feels like it breaks again. “I just. I know you can’t be happy with me.”

“I was,” Remus replies. Sirius makes a noise that sounds like a crackle through the speakers, more than anything else, and Remus continues: “I was so fucking happy with you, Sirius. You’re a fucking enigma of hurt and happy and—“ a sob escapes Remus’ lips —“you’re a… a category five hurricane I can’t get enough of.”

“Remus.” Sirius sounds like he’s crying a little, and Remus knows that he himself is crying a lot through his messy sentences.

“You’re destruction and a building team at the same time and it’s been five  _ fucking  _ years and I still love you.”

“I know,” Sirius says. “You can’t… You can’t keep loving me, though, I’ll just break you again.”

Remus thinks he’s going to break now, as Sirius says it. Split down by the middle and fall through the cracked asphalt, crash and burn again and again like he’s done so many times before. “I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Good bye,” Sirius says through a sob. “I’m sorry.” And then he hangs up, leaving Remus alone on the cracked pavement by a petrol station somewhere in Wales, sobbing and aching and sopping wet. Again. 

Because even the brightest of stars burn out, and the ice melts come spring.

**Author's Note:**

> again, i'm so sorry for any fucked up mistakes lolzor i don't feel like editing today
> 
> check me out on [tumblr](https://confunded-gryffindor.tumblr.com/) if you wanna


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